Lawmakers in Mexico's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, passed a bill on Wednesday night that would make recreational marijuana legal in the country.
The measure, approved with a vote of 316-129, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and grow a limited number of cannabis plants at home with a permit and grant licenses for producers to grow and sell marijuana. Individual lawmakers are now discussing revisions to the bill, but the final version is likely to be approved by the Senate. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has indicated he supports the measure.
"Today we are in a historic moment," Simey Olvera, a lawmaker from the Morena Party, said. "With this, the false belief that cannabis is part of Mexico's serious health problems is left behind."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
More than 120 million people live in Mexico, and if the bill is signed into law, it will make the country the world's largest marijuana market, based on population. In 2018, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional, and in January, three years after medicinal cannabis use was legalized, the Mexican health ministry published regulation rules.
Recent polling shows that almost two-thirds of Mexico's population is opposed to legalizing marijuana, The New York Times reports, and critics say this new bill likely wouldn't do anything to stop violence committed by drug traffickers, who focus more on methamphetamines and fentanyl. Activists are also wary, believing that the growing permits will mostly go to the rich, freezing out small farmers.
-
Israel: Losing the American publicFeature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Unmaking AmericansFeature Trump is threatening to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans. Could he do that?
-
EPA: A bonfire of climate change regulationsFeature The Environmental Protection Agency wants to roll back its 'endangerment finding,' a ruling that lets the agency regulate carbon emissions
-
ABC News to pay $15M in Trump defamation suitSpeed Read The lawsuit stemmed from George Stephanopoulos' on-air assertion that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll
-
Judge blocks Louisiana 10 Commandments lawSpeed Read U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ruled that a law ordering schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms was unconstitutional
-
ATF finalizes rule to close 'gun show loophole'Speed Read Biden moves to expand background checks for gun buyers
-
Hong Kong passes tough new security lawSpeed Read It will allow the government to further suppress all forms of dissent
-
France enshrines abortion rights in constitutionspeed read It became the first country to make abortion a constitutional right
-
Texas executes man despite contested evidenceSpeed Read Texas rejected calls for a rehearing of Ivan Cantu's case amid recanted testimony and allegations of suppressed exculpatory evidence
-
Supreme Court wary of state social media regulationsSpeed Read A majority of justices appeared skeptical that Texas and Florida were lawfully protecting the free speech rights of users
-
Greece legalizes same-sex marriageSpeed Read Greece becomes the first Orthodox Christian country to enshrine marriage equality in law
